Governor Don's Message

by Gov Don Dudey

Membership Growth Month and Contest

Kiwanis International President Paul Palazzolo has set the month of May as Membership Growth Month for all clubs worldwide. You can read Paul's letter by clicking here. President Paul is very passionate about membership growth for our organization. Kiwanis must grow in order to survive and be such an outstanding organization that we are. Without members, we can not provide the service that we are so proud of, without members we can not support our Service Leadership Programs, and without members we will do nothing.

Capital District wants to do their part with this initiative so in conjunction with your Division LTG, the Capital District is having an exciting District-wide Membership Growth Contest. There will be six (6) cash prizes awarded to clubs with the greatest number of new members added, based on a percentage of their total membership number for the period of May 1 thru June 30, 2010.

Each Division winner will receive a Governor's Membership Growth patch to be placed on their club banner. Then, each division winner will be eligible for the grand prize of $750, or one of the five honorable mention $250 prizes. The prizes are to be used for any service activity the club is conducting, NOT for club operations. All of the winners will be specially recognized at the 92th District Annual Convention in Lynchburg, August 20-23, 2010.

I encourage each Division to have a Division-wide membership contest. The winner of each Division will be placed in a hat and the six winners will be drawn. The results will be taken from the August 1, 2010 KI publication of club membership.

I hope that each club and division participate in this District-wide membership drive as we "Grow for Service" for the children of the Capital District and the World.

Kiwanis Conventions

We just completed the Capital District Midwinter Conference in conjunction with the 50th Anniversary of the CKI District Convention in Arlington, Virginia. We had over 450 Kiwanians and CKIers attend this outstanding convention and if you did not attend you missed a great deal of training, fun and fellowship. Kiwanis International President Paul Palazzolo provided an outstanding aspect to this convention which everyone appreciated. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Midwinter Convention Committee, chaired by Jeff Wolff for all of their hard work and long hours in making this convention such an outstanding and fun convention.

We can now look forward to our Kiwanis International Convention in Las Vegas, June 26-28, 2010. Each of you are receiving the details and I hope that you will join us in Las Vegas for some fun, fellowship and education.

However, if you can not attend the International Convention, we sure hope that you can attend our own Capital District Annual Convention in Lynchburg on August 20-23, 2010. The Lynchburg Club and Division 2 are working very hard in making this a major event for all of us. Details will be forthcoming on this convention in the next month or two.